Single-digit approval? Not exactly

Matt Drudge blew the ram’s horn early Tuesday morning: “Congressional Approval Rating Falls to Single Digits for First Time Ever.” Within minutes, the conservative group Freedom’s Watch was blasting the news out to reporters. And by afternoon, Rep. Adam Putnam of Florida — the No. 3 Republican in the House — had welded it into a cudgel with which to beat the Democrats.

“A new national survey out today puts congressional approval in the single digits, at 9 percent,” Putnam told reporters gathered for a pen-and-paper session. “At the rate we are going now, gas prices and congressional approval should cross paths any day now.”

Story Continued Below

The only catch: The news wasn’t exactly the news.

Congressional approval ratings are low and getting lower, but the Rasmussen Reports poll numbers that had Drudge breaking, Freedom’s Watch blasting and Putnam bludgeoning Tuesday weren’t really congressional approval ratings, even if Rasmussen’s own headline described them as such.

See also

But 36 percent of Rasmussen’s respondents said they consider Congress’ job performance to be fair. Is that approval or disapproval?

Rasmussen CEO Scott Rasmussen said that’s a fair question but one without a clear answer. His best guess: If you converted the thinking behind the answers into the binary results of most polls — approval or disapproval — then Congress’ approval rating might actually be as high as the mid-20s.

That’s higher than the 13 percent approval rating Congress got in an “approve or disapprove” NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last month. But it’s well below the 41 percent favorable rating Congress got last month when The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press asked whether voters had a favorable or unfavorable view of Congress.

Pew’s Michael Dimock said asking respondents — as Rasmussen did — to say whether Congress is doing an excellent job or a good job amounts to setting a higher bar.

“You have to actively think they are doing a good job, and not many people ever have that view of Congress,” Dimock said.

Of course, fewer people today seem to have that view than in years past. When Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007, 53 percent of Pew’s respondents said they had a favorable view of the institution. That share has since dropped by 12 percentage points.

However you gauge it, Rasmussen says it’s “impossible to overstate the general level of cynicism people feel about Congress and the functioning of government.”

Yes, but what does that mean?

Rasmussen is quick to note that polls such as his do not presuppose that respondents are paying close attention to the daily goings-on in the halls and hearing rooms of Capitol Hill. So maybe Congress is just a national metonym for “government” or “the world” or “the crappy way things are going these days.”